Virtual shopping with Bodymetrics will show how outfits fit on your body

Bodymetrics used the technology in Microsoft’s Kinect motion-sensing system for the Xbox 360 for a virtual shopping application.

If it works, it could enhance the experience of shopping for clothing online, which has become at $30 billion market. At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the London-based company showed how it lets you scan your body at home using a 3D capture camera from PrimeSense.

That gives the system — a computer or, in the future, an Xbox 360 game console — an exact image of what you look like. Then you can try on clothes in a virtual way, standing in front of your web-connected TV set and using hand gesetures to look at different selections. When you try on an outfit, you can view a heat map that shows additional data you can’t get through ordinary online shopping. For instance, you can see a heat map that shows areas where the clothing would fit your body loosely or where it would be too tight.

“You can see if an outfits fits you or not or is too tight or is a perfect fit,” said Suran Goonatilake, chairman and co-founder of Bodymetrics, in an interview.

It takes about a minute to be scanned into a PrimeSense camera, which maps a 3D space, including your body, and is the technology used in Kinect, which has sold 18 million units for games on the Xbox 360. Bodymetrics is a new application of the same technology in a different market. Bodymetrics has added information about clothing about fabric and how it stretches across certain body types. When it comes to size, preference accounts for a couple of sizes, Goonatilake said.

“Some people like to wear clothes tighter than others,” he said.

Only one in ten people shop online because they are unsure whether the clothes the buy online will fit them or not. Bodymetrics can help the whole industry grow if it solves that problem.

Bodymetrics can also help physical retailers.

“About 30 percent to 40 percent of clothing bought is returned to retailers. The No. 1 reason is fit,” said Goonatilake. “That’s the fundamental problem we are solving here,”We can reduce the number of returns they have.”

Goonatilake said the company has tested it with retailers for a few years and is now ready to roll it out with PrimeSense in the U.S.

Check out our video interview with Lainey Sheridan-Young, head of fashion at Bodymetrics, below.